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Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

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621–630 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#621

Workplace from Facebook. The company I work for uses this for internal communication. Workplace is basically the same Facebook and Messenger, but tweaked for a private group of people. The problem is that, because this is basically the same Facebook, it is designed to keep you "engaged". It uses all kinds of patterns to keep you addicted to your timeline and search for attention. Rather keeping you informed with the…

+1 to this. I worked at FB for a few years and Workplace is just Facebook re-skinned. My big gripe with Workplace is similar to what ceronman says, it is essentially engineered to create meta-work. People end up using it to self-promote every little thing that they do to get visibility and this leads to it being incredibly noisy and really filled with information that isn't relevant and important things get buried under all of the filler. The only real upside to workplace is that I think it is better for Q/A groups than something like Slack is, at least for larger companies.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#622
I guess the beauty of being old is that I have experienced how software has gotten so much better.

It's interesting seeing negative comments about things like AWS, Git, JIRA, etc, and compare to what my career was like BEFORE those were mainstays.

It's cool that so many people aren't satisfied with the status quo, and will continue to push the to make things better.

To throw in my answer, G-Suite (as an IT Administrator).

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#623

Microsoft Teams. I am forced to use it (work) and it is missing really basic features that messenger software had in the 1990s like Push-To-Talk, real multi-window (even with the recent "pop-out" functionality), and its UI is all the worst modern trends. You cannot extend it or fix these issues (e.g. plugins, custom CSS styles, etc). Plus it is buggy, I keep not getting calls/messages/etc, and every time my computer…

I am going to go against the grain and say I rather like Teams. Video calls work really well. Voice calls are clear. Screen sharing occasionally doesn't work as some have noticed, but restarting the call seems to fix it. It is so much better than Webex though. I think it is still suffering from the teething troubles of trying to bring so many things under one umbrella, Sharepoint (which already had groups), Skype for…

I've been using Teams for some work and I also agree that it's pretty good. I really like the integration with OneDrive/Sharepoint so you can build up a project of files. Using remote files on local instances of MS office products is seemless and super easy to do. Of course, the version control isn't as good as something like git, but my coworkers are not familiar with git and don't have any interest in learning it. So at least with Teams I can have my work live on a Team's folder/repository thing so anyone else at my job can access it when they need to, complete with version history!

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#624

Anything Atlasssian. Jira, Bitbucket, confluence. Just frustrating to use, poor UX, and slow. Business types love them however. AWS. It’s UI is honestly baffling, it feels and looks like someone made it in a rush with jQuery and Bootstrap years ago. It’s login and identity and resource management is confusing, and apparently you need a chrome extension which adds a bunch of complicated options I don’t really understa…

I love it. A list where I disagree on everything you listed up. Then again, I understand where you're coming from, I simply don't agree.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#627
post #430
post #295

Android. Truly horrible platform where I cannot even find a clock app that just works. I mean there is one shipped with a phone, but it has inconvenient timer and I do not like how time selection is done -- a lots of movements to scroll numbers to find one I need, -- but I cannot configure it to my convenience and I cannot find another clock app that works. And all this "Google phone wants to have an access to calend…

> how time selection is done -- a lots of movements to scroll numbers to find one I need That's the worst way to pick a time that I've seen and used. It requires a lot of swiping, combined with looking for the precise moment to stop the scrolling and not overshoot. Thankfully in some Android variants it's replaced with much better alternatives. Google Pixel's stock apps in Android 9 and 10 use a round watch face for…

What really annoys me about the timer is that there's no option for it to chime for ten seconds or so and stop, instead of making me fumble with it and press the button. Because I use the timer every day when cooking, and my hands are often busy and dirty during that—while I can hear the timer loud and clear (especially if I'm listening to audiobooks).

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#628

Anything Atlasssian. Jira, Bitbucket, confluence. Just frustrating to use, poor UX, and slow. Business types love them however. AWS. It’s UI is honestly baffling, it feels and looks like someone made it in a rush with jQuery and Bootstrap years ago. It’s login and identity and resource management is confusing, and apparently you need a chrome extension which adds a bunch of complicated options I don’t really understa…

I could not disagree more with Atlassian. They are among the best software i have ever used. Especially bitbucket is superb. Confluence is by far the best wiki I have ever used. Jira is 10x better than any alternative I'm aware of.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#629
post #591

Sorry, but everything listed here is rank amateur stuff when compared to Blackboard Learn ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Learn ). First, the user interface is designed as if the programmers were incentivized to maximize the number of clicks required to get anywhere. Second, it has the responsiveness of continental drift. Third, editing and formatting text is an exercise in torture. When I want to delete t…

Gradefinity ( https://gradefinity.com ) is a kind of Blackboard + Scantron LMS alternative that is really targeted in terms of what problems it intends to solve (in-person and online tests, gradebooks, and communication). Full disclosure: I built it-- I'm very receptive to feedback and feature suggestions though and am looking for pilot schools if anyone is interested in shaping the platform/knows someone who might b…

Some questions: does Gradefinity have the ability for teachers to publish learning modules for collaboration purposes? And orchestrate tasks among themselves? For example two teachers both writing up 200 vocabulary words to make a 400 vocabulary words quiz - can that be merged? Sharing content both between teachers and between classes is extremely important and seems to be underserved by Blackboard. Also do you model classes as being able to span terms, i.e. a two-semester class is a single entity?
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